The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is proposing long-awaited regulations governing the fast-growing electronic cigarette industry.

The new rules, to be made public Thursday, are expected to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products, placing them under the same requirements as cigarettes. That would likely include a ban on the sale to minors.

“That would be a little less stringent than if they were regulated as medicinal products used in smoking cessation,” said Dr. Hilary Tindle, assistant professor of medicine and director of the tobacco treatment service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

The FDA said the public, the electronic cigarette industry and others will have 75 days to comment on the proposed regulations.

I’ll go ahead and add my comment before the 75-day period even begins.

Back off, bub.

I don’t smoke e-cigarettes, but a close friend of mine used them to quit smoking the real thing after years and years of failed attempts. He’d tried patches, gum, cold turkey, only smoking when his wife was at work — everything.

I’ve thought about buying one, just because I still sometimes miss that feeling of well-being you get from a rush of nicotine with that first cup of coffee in the morning, or right after a big meal. And why not? Nicotine inhaled via vapor isn’t going to give anybody any cancer. The only reason I don’t do it is I’m afraid the busybodies will take them away, leaving me craving a real smoke for the first time in a long time.

That’s not a risk I’m willing to take, not after it took me years of failed attempts to quit, just like my close friend.

But that’s what busybodies do: Restrict pleasure for the sake of restricting pleasure.

Stephen Green began blogging at VodkaPundit.com in early 2002, and has served as PJMedia's Denver editor since 2008. He's one of the hosts on PJTV, and one-third of PJTV's Trifecta team with Scott Ott and Bill Whittle. Steve lives with his wife and sons in the hills and woods of Monument, Colorado, where he enjoys the occasional lovely adult beverage.

My husband, who has tried to quit smoking dozens of times is now using an E-Cig. I encourage him for the sake of health. But here comes the government to protect all those "smoking cessation" industries, that don't work for many people. And of course as many here have noted - just another way for the grabby, greedy, wasteful, corrupt government to take money out of the public's pockets.

The free market invents a product that replaces smoking, something that can benefit millions of people who wish to kick the habit and live longer, healthier lives, but the mobsters in Washington can have it if they're not getting their vig. This is all about The Leviathan losing out on tobacco taxes. Period.

Hey, when I was a kid and everyone smoked and you were supposed to grind the butts into the carpet to help preserve it, that was just life. When I was in college and cigarette girls occassionally appeared on campus to hand out free packs, well, wasn't that swell. I never smoked, but I hardly even noticed it either. But as the the 1990s brought on cigarette prohibition from the workplace, well, y'know, I decided that maybe that was a good thing after all. Curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid git. Why should I have to share your indulgences?

The problem with ecigs is that it attempts to reverse this entire process. Nobody is banning them, you'll notice, just treating them more like the real thing. I've had a lot of very self-righteous snots smoking these things in the office and blowing clouds of who knows what in my direction. Y'know, I never missed that. I don't know about nicotine, but the ethylene glycol used to produce the smoke, is not anything I want to breath, either. And then I saw some young buck walking down the street with an eCigar, blowing an IMMENSE cloud of whatever as he walked. Well, crap. I sure don't need that everywhere I go. So it turns out that maybe it's just about right, to regulate the ecigs like the real thing. If you want to debate whether even real cigs should be regulated as they are, well, that's another matter. In theory I'm as libertarian as the next guy. In practice, well, maybe not so much.

I was a heavy smoker for 35 years. I started when I was 13. I too tried everything from patches, gum, hypnosis, expensive drugs and cold turkey but the longest I ever made it was 2 weeks. When I tried e-cigs, I still had a half pack of real cigs in my car. That was 5 years ago and that same half pack is still in my car. After about a year of e-cigs, I weaned myself off by slowly lowering the nicotine level until it was nicotine free and thus easy to just stop one day when I did not get around to ordering the refills. Oh, and by the way, e-cigs are much cheaper than the real thing especially if you are in high tax states. Little wonder that those high tax states are the same states trying to regulate/ban e-cigs. It would almost make you wonder if that tax was really about getting people to quite smoking or just raise money.

Um, I agree with the anti-Puritanism sentiment ... but nicotine -- even in vapor -- is carcinogenic. It's not the only carcinogen in cigarettes, but it's one of them. And it's horrible on arteries. It needs to be excreted through the urine, and can also cause bladder cancer. Ask a chewer about that.

But for all the anti-Puritanism out there, keep in mind, there's no evidence that these things are "safe" and there is reason to believe they could be very harmful. More study is needed, but inhaling just about any irritant is harmful, and doing it habitually is an odd study to do on yourself.

My brand of libertarianism is not mutually exclusive with self-preservation.